The quite different cases of social innovation presented here suggest some conclusions in relation to financing, duration of projects/programmes and networking. The scarcity of resources, especially in these years of crisis, is a recurrent element in our cases. Need (and also applications) for income support, employment insertion, housing inclusion and other kinds of help have…
33.1. Short description The “Fondazione3 Welfare Ambrosiano” (FWA) was created by a heterogeneous core of both institutional and associative stakeholders: the Municipality of Milan; the Province of Milan; the Milan Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Handcraft and Agriculture; the three main Milanese trade unions (CGIL, Camera del Lavoro Metropolitana; CISL, Unione Sindacale Territoriale di Milano; and…
34.1. Short description Investing in and reorganising the early child care services system was one of the programme points of the campaign for mayor Giuliano Pisapia in the winter/spring of 2010/2011 (Costa and Sabatinelli 2013). The commitment of the new administration for a more inclusive, open and plural city was intended as a frame of…
35.1. Short description The Fondazione Housing Sociale (FHS) has been chosen as a case on innovation in housing policies in Milan even if its scope is regional and now, as will be explained, national. It is a pioneer experience that gave birth to the first ethical fund for social housing in Italy, anticipating ad hoc…
The cases of innovations presented here cover three areas of policy: income support and professional reintegration; early child care and education; and housing. A few elements emerge as relevant in all cases considered. A first major issue at stake appears to be the amount of available resources as opposed to increasing and changing needs, a…
Local background of the social innovations Emergence of local proactive welfare policies: As far as housing and child care policies are concerned, multi-level governance is the predominant situation with more or less shared responsibilities between national and local governments. It introduces complex institutional relations and potential tensions on issues such as priorities on the agenda…
39.1. Short description In the summer of 2011, several so-called “work corporations” (werkcorporaties) started operating in the municipality of Nijmegen. These work corporations aim at re-employing social assistance (Wet Werk en Bijstand, or WWB) receivers with a considerable distance from the labour market by offering them a place where they can combine work and education.…
40.1. Short description Housing corporation Portaal, together with the municipality of Nijmegen, started the project “A Future for Everybody” in 2009 because the province (Gelderland) reserved money for the development of “innovative living arrangements” within a larger programme. It was not stated clearly what was meant by “innovative living arrangements”, but the focus had to…
41.1. Short description In 2009, three Moroccan fathers in Nijmegen saw that successful “neighbourhood father” projects were running in other cities in the Netherlands. Together with a local welfare worker from Tandem Welfare they visited such a project in The Hague to see how it was organised. The fathers thought that such an initiative could…
Sustainability Although all innovations were, at least at the start, dependent on public funding, an explicit wish exists among members of all three projects to continue even if financial resources dry up. However, this urge to be self-sufficient was driven by different logic. Work corporations would prefer to earn revenues of their own because the…